SAP Declares "We had a shitty CRM system"

April 10, 2008. Not exactly the words you would expect to hear from SAP co-founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner, however, in response to the pointed jabs and not so sincere remarks by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Plattner decried "We had a shitty CRM system" as a reason why the German software titan failed to win CRM business against much smaller rivals such as Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff and SAP's Hasso Plattner

SAP's Hasso and Salesforce.com's Benioff faced off at the Churchhill Club's Computer History Museum event. In an obvious and predictable antagonistic approach, Benioff said, "SAP needs to write its new apps on our platform, and I need to help him do that because there is no way he can figure that out." When Plattner responded, "We have the largest software development project in our history, with 2,500 developers developing on demand", Benioff tauntingly retorted, "You have 2,500 developers and 2,100 interfaces. All that and no customer success." Oooh that kinda hurts. This of course isn't the first jab at the German software giant. Benioff previously stated in an interview with News.com Charlie Cooper, "With SAP, you really have not seen innovation in the last 10 years. If you think about what is the one thing that SAP has ever innovated, what have they created that's unique to the industry or value-added technology? I have a hard time thinking about what SAP is going to be known for at the end of the day." Ouch. I kinda feel sorry for the old guy.